Spain Scrambles to Assure Buyers
Beef Is Safe from Mad-Cow Threat

MADRID -- The advent of widespread testing for mad-cow disease this year has claimed another victim: Spain's belief that its herds were free of the ailment.

As late as December, Spain's minister of agriculture appeared before journalists, eating strips of roasted beef. "Spanish beef is tender, juicy and healthy," minister Miguel Angel Arias Canete told his audience at the time. Although two cases of mad-cow disease had been discovered weeks before, Mr. Arias Canete and other government officials said the cases...